Author: Jennifer Roberts

Let’s try this again: X-Plane 11.35b6

Beta 6 is now available to fix the hang with auto update. Please note that it will actually take two (2) rounds of updates to see the complete fix. B6 will still hang, but it contains the fix so that when you update after that, it should work as usual.

To get beta six, run the updater and click “get betas”. Once you have beta six, the next update will work normally.

Release notes here.

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X-Plane 11.35b5 is Out

We are nearing the end of the beta cycle and it is highly likely that the next build will be a release candidate. (Release notes here.) I’ll continue to sound like a broken record: please test your addons if you haven’t done so already!

One thing of particular note for aircraft authors in this update: we added datarefs to read the contents of the X-Plane default FMS Control and Display Unit (CDU) screen. You can read more about this addition here.

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X-Plane 11.35b3

Beta three is now available to LR customers, and we expect Steam to be available within 24 hours. This beta has the last of our planned code changes for 11.35 (in addition to bug fixes), so we expect the rest of the beta period to be focused on fixing regression bugs.

If you haven’t already, this would be a great beta to test your add ons in to ensure we haven’t broken them. If we have, get at us via the bug report form and be sure to include a copy of your add on.

Edit: 11.35b3 is live on Steam too now.

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On to the Next: X-Plane 11.35b2

We have fixed the two high visibility bugs reported over the last couple days, and now have beta two out. This build should have fixed the cloud rendering issue as well as the scenery pack typo.

If you had installed beta 1, you should be auto-prompted to update. It is also live on Steam.

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X-Plane 11.35b1

The first public beta for X-Plane 11.35 is now available! (Steam is staged and will be released shortly.) This is an update that includes new Gateway airports, FMOD sound for the Boeing B737-800 and KingAir C90B, improved aircraft systems, and landmark scenery packs for New York and Washington D.C.

Aircraft developers will want to review Philipp’s notes on the:

Bug fix highlights include multiple metar interpretation fixes, an ATC crash bug fix, and fixes to many of the default aircraft.

Full release notes are available here.

Update: We are aware of a cloud rendering bug with anti-aliasing. The work around for now is to turn off or use the lowest setting of anti-aliasing.

We are working on b2 to fix this issue and will be holding the wide release of the Steam beta for the fix. If you really, really, really want to use b1 with this known issue, you can email me directly at my first name @x-plane.com and I’ll get you into the private Steam beta.

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WED 2.1 Beta

You can now grab the WED 2.1 beta here. This is a minor update with bug fixes and enhancements such as extending the facade preview to all types of facades and to the map window. You can also read Michael’s extended release notes here.

New Meta-tag Identifies 2D or 3D Airports

We’d like to point your attention especially to the new “2D” or “3D” meta-tag for export targets of 11.30 or higher. This tag tells the X-Plane GUI to list the airport as “2D” or “3D”.

Before X-Plane 11.35, the information in the “Features” column in the X-Plane airport selection menu came from any scenery in a user’s Custom Scenery directory, rather than being an entry in the system-wide apt.dat in the Resources/default scenery/default apt dat/ directory. The assumption was any addon airport would always be 3D. But starting with X-Plane 11.33, all global airports, even those with 2D-only layouts, were now included
in the Global Airports –which made the X-Plane GUI effectively list every airport as “3D”.

At export, WED 2.1 will analyze the scenery for 3D content and look for the existence of the meta-tag “GUI label”. If the export target is 11.30 or higher it will warn if the tag is missing or improperly set, ultimately leaving it up to the designer how they want the airport to be listed in X-Plane. If the target is “Gateway”, it will forcibly create or update this meta-tag to always be set correctly according to the actual scenery exported.

In order to fix the 2D/3D display in X-Plane 11.35 and later for any scenery not submitted via the Gateway, authors will need to manually add the tag via “Airport->Add Meta Data” and then re-exported to a target of X-Plane 11.30 or higher.

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Custom Scenery Order in 11.33

Gateway airports live in two locations in the X-Plane install folder: 3D airports live in Custom Scenery, while 2D airports live in Resources. X-Plane 11.33 now includes all airports in the Custom Scenery Global Airports folder.

This could cause issues with how your Custom Scenery pack displays. We saw this with the KSEA demo area — the 2D non-customized Gateway pack suppressed our KSEA Demo Area pack for some users.

We are fixing this for X-Plane 11.33r2, but as a general recommendation: please make sure that any custom airports you have installed are higher in the scenery_packs.ini file than the “Global Airports” pack that comes with X-Plane. This way the gateway airports won’t hide your custom scenery.

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X-Plane 11.33b1 Out Now

X-Plane 11.33b1 is an incremental update that includes updated Gateway airports and translations, crash fixes and diagnostics, minor UI improvements, and bug fixes such as:

  • XPD-9441 Weight, balance and fuel- Total weight (lbs) does not include weapons.
  • XPD-9683 Fix dupe banks in FMOD crashing the sim.
  • XPD-9882 Fixed KOAK nav data.
  • XPD-9919 Lightning appears in cockpit in VR.
  • XPD-9991 Crashes on older Intel GPUs.
  • XPD-9992 Default FMC, Holding Pattern will only be flown once.
  • XPD-10003 Landing lights has no effect on battery amperage draw.
  • XPD-10007 Fixed slip ball limit.

For a full list of bug fixes, see the release notes here.

Just a reminder that the sim will not prompt you to install this beta–you will need to launch the installer manually and opt into betas to get this version.

We are putting more effort into cleaning up frequent crashes. We recently upgraded our back end crash reporting to a fancy paid service that we hope will allow us to gain a lot more insight into what is going wrong. This beta includes additional crash logging for that purpose.

Keeping in the crash-fixing vein, we believe we also fixed two notable crashes in this beta: issues with Intel GPUs and with duplicate FMOD sound banks. We heard from a lot of Intel users about these crashes, so Sidney took a look and was able to find a fix for it. The FMOD crash has been a round for a while and was caused by duplicating an aircraft folder that included FMOD. When an FMOD bank had the same contents on disk at a different file path, FMOD wouldn’t load it. We now handle this case gracefully.

Update: Steam users can get 11.33b1 by selecting the public beta under application properties.

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